South America -- Description and travel; South America -- History
Probably realizing this, he promptly abandoned all subterfuge. As a
consideration for the help he had been given in the campaign against
Quizquiz, the Inca had been induced by stress of circumstances to
acknowledge the supremacy of the King of Spain. It was only as a matter
of form, he had been led to believe, but Pizarro now exacted the fullest
compliance. As Adelantado by appointment of the overlord, he established
a municipal council to govern the city, transformed the great temple
into a church, made use of certain of the public buildings as officers’
quarters and barracks for the soldiers, seized all the treasure that was
to be found—even the private dwellings and tombs were searched and
stripped of it—and required the authorities to supply troops and
carriers to accompany the exploring parties he sent out. “Pizarro, on
entering Cuzco, had issued an order forbidding any soldier to offer
violence to the dwellings of the inhabitants,” says Prescott:
“But the palaces were numerous and the troops lost no time in
plundering them of their contents as well as in despoiling the
religious edifices. The interior decorations supplied them with
considerable booty. They stripped off the jewels and rich
ornaments that garnished the royal mummies in the temple of
Coricancha. Indignant at the concealment of their treasures,
they put the inhabitants, in some instances, to the torture and
endeavored to extort from them a confession of their hiding
places. They invaded the repose of the sepulchers, in which the
Peruvians often deposited their valuable effects, and compelled
the grave to give up its dead. No place was left unexplored by
the rapacious conquerors, and they occasionally stumbled on a
mine of wealth that rewarded their labors. In a cavern near the
city they found a number of vases, richly embossed with figures
of serpents, locusts, and other animals. Among the spoils were
four golden llamas and ten or twelve statues of women, as large
as life, some of gold, others of silver, ‘which merely to see,’
says one of the conquerors, with some naïveté, ‘was truly a
great satisfaction.’... The magazines were stored with curious
commodities—richly tinted robes of cotton and feather work, gold
sandals and slippers of the same material, for the women, and
dresses composed entirely of beads of gold.’... In one place,
for example, they met with ten planks or bars of solid silver,
each piece twenty feet in length, one foot in breadth, and two
or three inches thick. They were intended to decorate the
dwelling of an Inca noble.... The amount of booty is stated
variously by those present at the division of it. According to
some, it considerably exceeded the ransom of Atahualpa.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account